Well, you might want to have
the book of Daniel open this morning. The prophecy of Daniel
comes after the big prophecies, Isaiah, Jeremiah, then the little
bit of Lamentations, then Ezekiel, another big prophecy, and then
the book of Daniel. And the reason is because it's
very relevant. All Scripture is relevant. All
Scripture is profitable. All Scripture is good. But some
things speak to us particularly in the situation that we are.
in a particularly powerful way. So it's my intention to look
for a series of messages in the book of Daniel over coming weeks.
Let me give you some background to this book and I've written
it down in the article in the bulletin so you can take that
away with you. But as you know the kingdom, the first king was
Saul but of course he transgressed and God replaced him with David,
a man as he said after his own heart. And after David, despite
turmoil and conflict because of the way we are in this flesh,
then there came Solomon in his wisdom. Kings of a united Israel. And then they got to the next
one, Rehoboam. And in the reign of King Rehoboam, Israel, the
northern ten tribes separated from the southern two tribes
of Judah. They separated. And there was
animosity between the two nations, Israel in the north and Judah
in the south. And at times there were alliances but a lot of the
time there was animosity between them. It was like a sort of a,
you could regard it as a major family feud that we sometimes
hear about and that caused such bitterness. Well, the northern
kingdom was filled with evil. All of its kings, all of its
kings did evil in the sight of the Lord, all of them, without
fail. and God had promised judgment and punishment for walking away
from his ways and so in 722 BC and remember when we're going
BC the bigger the number the further ago it is the smaller
the number the nearer it is 722 before Christ so 2750 years ago
let's say give or take the Assyrian nation real nation you can go
to Assyria you can go to Syria today But there was a nation
of Assyria. And they took Israel away captive. And they basically destroyed
the ten tribes of Israel from the face of the earth to the
extent that nobody has... Anybody who calls themselves
Jewish today has no way of knowing how they relate to any one of
those tribes. God fulfilled His promise. He obliterated Israel
from the face of the earth. And they became Samaria. Samaria. You know in the days of Jesus,
There was great animosity between the Samaritans. You know, it's
like a branch of the family. We don't have anything to do
with them. You know, they did such and such a thing and we
don't have anything to do with them. And there was this great
animosity between them. And their judgment brought that
utter ruin. In the south, in the kingdom of Judah, their repeated
sin was the sin of idolatry. What is idolatry? It's following
false gods. Now you immediately think, and
the Scriptures picture it as this, that you get a tree trunk
and you carve an idol out of it and you bow down and worship
it. And in its most basic sense that's what it is. But idolatry
is more than that. Idolatry is the worship of anything
which is in the place of the true God of Scripture and of
his gospel of grace and his way of particular redemption. That's
what it is. So there are those like they
were in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, in the temple,
every day the gospel of God's sovereign grace was acted out.
In the sacrifices, and the forms of worship, and the symbols,
and the altar, and the showbread, and the holiest of all, all of
those things as we read in Hebrews, all of them, were a graphic picture
of how God saves the people he chose in Christ from before the
foundation of the world. Absolutely. But there, idolatry
was rampant in the midst of it. And so it is today. There are
those who use the words of sovereign grace and particular redemption.
But you know, as with those in Judah, their heart is gone after
idols because they follow false gods. And in their pride and
their arrogance, how they questioned and poured scorn on the Lord
of glory from their position of idolatrous feigning to be
the guardians of the truth of the sovereign grace of God and
yet in the middle of it they were committing terrible idolatry. Well kings came and went in Judah
after Israel was destroyed and mostly they were evil but there
were some who were genuinely godly. You remember the young
king Josiah who came to the throne and his father had done evil
in the sight of the Lord but he found the book of the law
in the temple. which was hardly used. In amongst
the ruins he found the book of the law and he started to read
it. And what is this word? This word is sharper than any
two-edged sword. This word is the words of eternal
life. This book rings so true. You
have moments we all do in our flesh where you doubt. As Satan
said to Eve, can these things really be? Has God really said?
And yet you know. It just rings with the truth
of the eternal God from start to finish. How can it be otherwise?
We're going to see some things that Daniel wrote 550, 600 years
before Christ came that were so perfectly fulfilled. Somebody
once calculated the odds, you know, the statistics. If I say,
I think next Wednesday is going to be a glorious sunny day, you
may think, well, it might be. Yeah, it could be one in three.
I'll have a look at the weather forecast. He might even be 90% right. But you know, it's very, very
rare, isn't it? I mean, we went and booked our holiday, and at
one stage I was thinking, should we go to the Lake District? No,
it always rains in the Lake District. Or should we go to Spain? Oh,
it's always sunny. Let's go to Spain. Let's go and get some
sunshine. And about two days before I went, I had a look,
and it said that from Sunday to Thursday, it was going to
be quite damp and rainy in Spain, whereas in the Lake District,
a lovely, lovely high pressure with not a cloud in the sky for
several days. We can't predict a thing. This book predicts so
many things absolutely exactly. How can it not be true? Why?
Because it's written by men, inspired by the Spirit of the
Living God. How can you prophesy things? How can you predict? How can
you tell truth? There's only one way you can
do it. There's only one way I can tell you for sure it's going
to be a sunny day a week on Wednesday. That's if I control the weather.
But I don't. But the God of Heaven does. And
He controls things, and He brings them to pass, and what He says
comes to pass. This is the truth of God. And
there had been these kings, some of whom had been godly, like
Josiah, and all with their faults, but nevertheless there was a
godly interlude. But at the end of it, I won't go into the details
because there were a couple of sons, one lasted a very short
period of time, but then the one that we read of in Daniel,
Jehoiakim, was another one of his sons. And he came to the
throne, and what does it say of him in the book of Kings and
in the book of Chronicles? And he did evil in the sight
of the Lord. And do you know what that means,
always when it says that? He followed after idolatrous
religion. Oh, he was a religious man, but
he followed after idolatrous false religion because he substituted
the truth of the Sovereign God of the universe, he substituted
that with his own knowledge of how surely God must really be
like this. Surely it must really be like
that. Surely it must really be that God is subject to the free
will of man. This is the way the mind works. This is what
they did. And that threat of exile that God had pronounced
again and again and again in the scriptures was brought to
fruition. In 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar came. Just four years into the reign
of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar came. The Babylonian Empire,
that united, glorious Babylonian Empire came and took them away.
Over a period of 23 years, carried all of the people away and left
Jerusalem and Judah, that province, left it a desolate ruin with
just the nomadic tribes around to inhabit it and took them away
and took them away to Babylon, to the capital. It was laid waste.
That one place on earth where the gospel was played out daily,
the doctrine of Christ and particular redemption was played out and
no doubt it was preached I could turn you to scriptures, I won't
for the sake of time, which show that in all of that preaching
in the Old Testament, you know what they preached was Christ.
They explained it, the godly ones, the remnant that God always
had, proclaimed this same message that we proclaim. And yet because
of their idolatry, they were carried away. And because of
their idolatry and the hypocrisy of so many, they were carried
away. And as I've said, like so many so-called churches in
our day, using the language of salvation, using the forms of
reformed faith and particular redemption and sovereign grace,
but full of empty hypocrisy and the ways of the world. You see,
this society that they were carried away to was Babylon. Babylon. It's not there now. It's just
a pile of dust in Iraq, in the middle of Iraq. It's never been
built on since. There are a few villages not
far away, but the ancient site of Babylon has been a ruined
ruin ever since it was destroyed. And its destruction was forecast,
its destruction was prophesied, as we'll see. But the religion
of this place has its roots in Cain and Abel. You know with
Cain and Abel, the two brothers, the sons of Adam and Eve, and
Cain came to God to be accepted on the basis of his works. God
is sure to accept me on the basis of his works. And Abel, Abel
said, nothing in my hand I bring. simply to thy cross not not the
cross not an idolatrous cross of wood not the sort of thing
that you see you know all around Catholic countries not that no
no on the Christ of the cross simply to him I cling by faith
by faith because everything that the sovereign God of the universe
requires of me as a child of God he has provided in that one
and only in him and so Abel brought his lamb picturing that one and
We saw in Genesis how the world became more and more corrupt
and more and more evil and more and more and God looked down
and saw that all things were evil and brought the flood of
Noah. And he brought that flood and then Noah and those that
were with him, the other seven that were with him came out of
the ark and they prospered and they multiplied and again the
earth was populated. And we read in Genesis 10, 8,
did that cure them for all time? No, no, the heart of man. is
deceitful above all things and exceedingly wicked. Who can know
it? God knows the heart. And He knows that sin in the
heart, even with the lessons of judgment so fresh in the mind
and so fresh in experience, that that sinful human heart will
always come up in rebellion. And we read of one in Genesis
10 verse 8, Nimrod. It says he was a mighty hunter
in here. That's not really what the word
means. It means a mighty rebel. He was a mighty rebel against
the sovereign God of the universe. And he founded that city of Babel,
did Nimrod. A mighty man, but a mighty rebel.
And he founded the city of Babel, where the tower of Babel was,
Genesis 11, where all the world was of one language and they
got together. Let's form, I paraphrase the sort of thing that they would
have said, let's form a utopian society. We do not need God telling
us what to do. We are, we've got, so much ingenuity,
so much goodness about us. Let's all get together and all
be one world of humanity doing our own thing in the way that
we want to and not be subject to this God. You know, it's the
religion of Satan. It's the rebellion of Satan.
And they started to build this tower that would reach up to
heaven. It's all symbolical. Isn't it just what the heart
of man does today? Trying to create a world of godless
utopia. where we're all friends together,
but we don't need this God thing. You know, you can talk about
anything you like, they say, except politics and religion. We don't
want this God thing. We don't want anything to do
with that. Let us man be united in our opposition to the salvation
of God, the way he reveals it. And so it is. Just like today,
the politics of today, you know, you might read in the bulletin,
you think that I, you maybe would think that I don't think that
democracy is a good idea for ruling nations. I think that
democracy is a very good idea, but in actual fact, It's a dreadful
system, it's just that it's nowhere near as bad as all the others.
They're all dreadful systems, but it's the least bad of all
of them. But people try to create, they have this view, they have
this view, the American government, the British government together,
that if we just create democracies everywhere, then the world's
going to be such a wonderful place in which to live. It isn't
because of the sin in the hearts of mankind. It isn't. Babel was
trying to create that sort of society, and shaking its fist
in the face of God, and saying, we will not have this God to
rule over us. Well, Babylon is there today
in modern Iraq. Just dust. Just a ruin. On the
site of Babel, that's where Babylon was built. That's where it got
its name from. In its day, in the day of Nebuchadnezzar, it
was absolutely magnificent. Its gardens, its hanging gardens,
built by Nebuchadnezzar, I mean, not literally physically by him,
but under his reign, They were regarded as one of the seven
wonders of the world. It must have been a truly magnificent
sight. It must have been opulent with
its riches. Everything that the world has
to offer was there in spades, as they say. Loads of it. It
truly was. We're going to see in Chapter
2 Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel's interpretation of it.
And truly Babylon was the head of gold of this great big statue.
It was the united, the only totally united kingdom, truly, the head
of gold. It must have been a magnificent
thing. But it speaks of everything. It stands for everything that
is man-made against the doctrine of God's salvation. And it's
a picture of this world in which we live. It's a picture of this
world. You see, what does the world
think? What is the doctrine of God's salvation? We have it summarized
in Romans chapter 9 and verse 16. For it is not of him who
wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. That's
the doctrine of God's salvation. It is not of him who wills, nor
of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. Who shows mercy. What can we do? Plead for mercy.
Whilst on others thou art calling, do not pass me by, says that
hymn. That's the plea. That's the sinner's
plea. The thief on the cross. Lord, I absolutely know what
I am. I know what I deserve. but Lord
remember me when you come into your kingdom that's the prayer
of true penitence and repentance and enlightenment by the Spirit
of God Lord remember me when you come into your kingdom this
day you shall be with me in paradise not of him who wills nor of him
who runs but of God who shows mercy but the world and the world's
religion however close it looks to the real thing because don't
forget Jesus said that false religion can be so convincing
it would deceive even the elect if that were possible. But it
isn't possible. It can look so much like the
real thing that it would deceive even the elect if that were possible.
You know they say about forgeries in money that some are very obvious.
I bought, who hasn't bought a leather wallet when on holiday in Spain?
I bought a leather wallet, a really good one, excellent value on
the market. And very nice it was too, and I'll get it out
of my pocket and I'll show you. It's very, very compact, but
it's got everything going for it. And in it was a 100 euro
note. I opened it up, there was a 100
euro note in it. Whoa, what? Ah, it didn't stand the test
of time very, very long. It was pretty obvious, fairly
early on, that this was a fake, just for the purpose of showing
you could put 100 euro notes into that bit of the wallet.
It was a fake, and so it goes. But you'll hear the, The police,
the crime reporters, they'll say on certain occasions when
there's been some money forgery going, this is an incredibly
good forgery. It's very convincing. You've
got to be very careful. You really have to look very
hard and know exactly what to look for to see, you know, some
things are so close. Deceive even the elect if that
were possible. But it's not possible. It isn't
possible. But there are signs. You can
tell. There are things that give it away. So Babylon represents
this world, this physical world all around us, of everything
that glitters, of everything that would entice the eyes, of
all the things that would take us away and, you know, all the
playstations and then flat-screen TVs and the fancy decorations
and all of these other things that would entice our hearts
and our affections. There's nothing wrong with things
in and of themselves, it's where your affections are, it's where
your heart is. It represents all of that. but
it also represents false religion. Babylon is false religion. It's
adulterous religion. Adulterous religion. You know,
adultery is a picture of dishonesty and deceit between a man and
a woman in marriage. That's what it's about. And it's
condemned in the Word of God, but it's a picture of that most
heinous adultery, which Israel was constantly accused of by
God in its idolatrous pursuit of false religions. It was like
committing adultery with the God who had married them. and
running away from Him and turning away from His salvation. So it
represents, Babylon represents false religion. It represents
a subtle deviation from sovereign grace and particular redemption.
That's why we must be so careful. That's why we must take such
care to be clear, to be sure that this Word is our teacher.
That this Word is our teacher. You see, it is. It really is.
We need the Spirit of God. The natural man cannot receive
these things. We need the Spirit of God to teach us. But with
his light it is clear. It's just that men take it and
they twist it. Do you know what they do? They
have a church creed. Do you know what I'm inclined to do? I know
this sort of sounds one-upmanship church-wise, but what's your
church creed? This? This book? That's the church
creed. I'm not going to write it down.
I've got no intention of writing it down. The moment you start
writing it down it starts taking on an authority of its own. and
you discover a scripture, which is what churches do again and
again. That doesn't quite conform to that statement in our church
principles of faith, does it? So you then start to twist and
find an interpretation. And the one becomes the authority
over the other. So we're not going to do it.
We're not going that way. Subtle deviation from the truth.
But Babylon is condemned to be destroyed. Babylon and all that
it represents is condemned to be destroyed. If you read on,
we read Revelation 17, but if you turned over into chapter
18 and you would read this, Babylon the Great, this is verse 2, Babylon
the Great is fallen. And then because it's almost
shocking to admit that Babylon the Great is fallen, it says
it again, is fallen. Babylon the Great is fallen,
is fallen and has become the habitat, what, this glorious
place? This magnificent city with its hanging gardens, this
magnificent world with all of its structures and its politics
and its power and its wealth and its dominion and the place
where everybody wants to be and do and be seen is fallen, is
fallen and has become the habitation of devils and the hold of every
foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird for
all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. and the kings of the earth have
committed fornication with her and the merchants of the earth
are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies and I heard
another voice from heaven saying come out of her my people that
ye be not partakers of her sins and that you receive not of her
plagues." I saw a play a couple of weeks ago on the television
about the destruction, about the downfall of the Lehman Brothers
Bank And in it, in a very poignant moment, one of the actors had
to recite those words. There's something more about
these words than just words on a page. You could almost tell
that the words were choking in her throat as an actress as she
was speaking these words about the greed that had led to the
downfall of that and so many other institutions. The merchants
of the earth waxed rich. Through the abundance of her
delicacies, they waxed rich. into that situation that real
physical Babylon 2,600 years ago into that real situation
was taken captive the whole of Judah and amongst them these
four that we read about in Daniel chapter 1 just these four young
men they can't have been more than 14 or 15 years old you know
not great powerful leaders they were in their most impressionable
age Do you know why you go to school and learn the things you
do at your age, Michael? And Lydia. You know why you do?
And Ariane. And, to a certain extent, you're
all getting to that sort of age. But those early teen years are
when you're most impressionable. You've got the greatest capacity
to take on board knowledge and learning. You'll never have a
better capacity to soak it up and take it in. That's why. That's
why you learn now, to prepare you. And so, Nebuchadnezzar was
very wise. He wasn't like a lot of despots.
who when they overran a kingdom tried to subdue them and tried
to beat them with the rod and bring them into subjection because
he knew that his kingdom was so big it was just physically
impossible he could never when he was when he was sat in his
capital in Babylon how on earth could he rule people a thousand
miles away even never mind further away he just couldn't do it it
was just too big so what do you do? you get the people that you've
conquered on your side You make them your servants. You make
them your supporters. You make them the ones who say,
hey, this is a good place to be. This is great. We can prosper. We can have everything we want.
This Babylon kingdom is a good kingdom to be part of. So he
takes the pick of the nations that he conquers and takes them
to Babylon to inculcate them into his culture, into his learning,
into his ways, into his religion, into everything about that situation,
and then when he's got them fully thinking, you know, this really
does work, this is, look at the people, they're prospering, they've
got bread to eat, this is great, this is wonderful, what a prosperous
kingdom, why would anybody want to rebel against it? So he takes
these, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and of course it's
gone into regular usage that Daniel has always kept his name,
but the other three we know them by the names that the Babylonians
gave them. Because they gave them names,
Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Those are the names
that they gave them. And here they were captive in
Babylon. What did Babylon try to do to
everyone that went to Babylon? It gave them a change of name.
What was in the change of name? The names that they were changed
to were all names to do with their idolatrous false gods.
That was the names that they were given. All to do with these
false idolatrous gods of the people of Babylon. They brought
them into their culture. They taught them their science,
their knowledge, their learning. We think we're so wise today,
but I imagine that there was tremendous... I mean, the scholars
who were able to read the cuneiform literature of that society would
tell you that there was tremendous culture and civilization and
learning and they got them to conform to its utopian godless
vision through its false gods these four were a tiny minority
in Babylon all Judah had been taken captive thousands and thousands
who knows millions even had been taken captive but do you know
what the majority of them did? they conformed willingly to the
learning that they were given. They found a way of compromising.
They found a way of remaining Jews. They found a way of remaining
those who knew the Scriptures. They found a way of doing all
those things but living quite happily and comfortably. Do you
know how I know that? If you read on in your Old Testament
to Nehemiah and Ezra, when you get to those books, which is
the return from exile, do you know it was a great struggle
to get lots of them to go back? Why? They were comfortable. They
had nice houses. They had good jobs. They were
prospering. Why do we want to go back there
and rebuild that ruin? We're quite happy here. But these
four remain true. These four didn't compromise. These four remain true to faith,
to truth, to hope, to the love of Christ in this situation in
Babylon. Why? Because although they were
living in Babylon, they were not imbibing or taking it into
them or becoming part of it. They were in it as was necessary
for we live in this world and we breathe its oxygen and we
eat its food you live in the world without being of the world
they were in it but not of it and what did they do you know
the story so well I mean we hardly need to do a verse by verse analysis
of this you know the story they they were given the king's food
and wine why because it was the best food and the best it was
food that was going to be served to the king this absolute supreme
ruler who had everything of the best and they were to be given
it. Why? To make them strong and to make them so pleased.
So pleased, you know, that the wine tasting, it would have been
the fifty pound a bottle stuff every single time at the table.
Oh, wow. Think of this, you can imagine
some of the other young men from Judah who'd been taken captive
thinking, hey, we didn't have wine like this back there, did
we? This is, oh, look at that steak. Oh, fantastic. You can
imagine. It was the best of food. The
intention being to make them strong and healthy and to grow
big and fit and powerful because these were going to be Babylonian
rulers of that bit of the world that Babylon controlled. And
so that's what they were to do. But they refused. Just these
four. They refused the king's food
and wine. Why did they refuse it? The reason
is this. It was tainted with the idolatry
of the false religion of Babylon. Probably the meat was offered
to idols before. Now we know from Paul's letters
later on about these things where Christians had tender consciences.
Paul is quite clear there's nothing wrong in itself. If you don't
have a conscience about eating meat offered to idols that's
fine. There's some, I'll give you a
more modern example. There's certain types of popular
music that you may, if you dig too deeply underneath, you'll
see some rather disturbing things in the backgrounds and the lives
of the people that play it. But some of these things, you
have to admit, musically, are genuinely good music. Genuinely,
it's very, very clever, innovative music, some of it. And, you know,
it's like, well, alright, I don't want to know the background to
this, it's meat offered to idols. You know, I can listen to it
for its own musical sake. In a way they could have done
that, but here they wouldn't do it because it was so clearly
associated with the idolatrous religion, the idolatrous false
religion of that Babylonian situation. It was perfectly good food and
wine, there was nothing wrong in itself, but to partake of
it would have meant that they had compromised with the objective
of that worldly advancement there in Babylon. Now isn't it like
that today? for us, seeking to preach the
gospel in a society that is so godless, with no thought for
God. You see, the intention in Babylon was that they would grow
in a worldly way. That they would eat this food,
they would become physically strong. I don't think it's stretching
a point too far to say this. There are those who would love
to see growth in the true Church of God. We would love to see
growth in numbers in the true church of God. We would love
to see people from Nebworth flocking to hear the gospel preached on
a Sunday. We would love to see that. We would love to see the
Spirit of God turning the hearts of men and women to seek His
face. We would love to see that. So what do we do? We try and
give a helping hand. We try and use methods of persuasion. We
try and give the kings food and wine because then it will grow
strong, won't it? Won't it grow fit and fleshy
and strong? And so we use worldly methods to try and achieve church
growth. And it's wrong. It's compromise.
It's compromise with idolatry. That's what it is. It's spiritual
treachery, as Don Fortner put it in a recent message. Spiritual
treachery on a grand scale. We live in this world. We all
live in this world. We have to. As I've already said,
we breathe its oxygen, we drink its water, we eat its food, we
buy, we sell, We make comfortable homes. As I told you earlier,
some of us even accidentally flood those homes on occasions.
We eat good food. We send our kids to the schools
in the world. Don't we? We have to do it. It's
the world in which we live. All of this in the world. But
we shun whatever is tainted with the sin and doctrine of false
religion and of man-made salvation, however subtly it deviates from
the truth of this word, to the law and to the testimony If they
speak not according to this word, there is no truth in them. There
is no light in them. And we will not, God helping
us, not in our own strength, because we have no strength.
With God's help, we will resist that. And with Daniel, Daniel
purposed in his heart, oh that God would give me that purpose.
And you, that purpose in heart. Purposed in his heart that he
would not defile himself. That he would not defile himself
with the portion of the king's meat. with those things that
have any sense of that false idolatry. I don't want anything
to do with it. In matters of religion, whatever
my flesh might think, whatever my flesh might think is a reasonable
compromise, whatever my flesh might think, well that might
lead to some results and people would look and be impressed with
us. No, absolutely not. God is the author of growth. God is sovereign over all of
these things. So Daniel refused. But he refused
graciously. You see, he requested, verse
8, of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.
Now look, verse 9. Now God had brought Daniel into
favor and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. God had
done that. God had brought him into that
favor. Is that an unreasonable thing to believe? The Bible says
that the heart of the king is in the hands of God. the heart
of the very king is in the hands of God. Surely the prince of
the eunuchs, his heart is in the hands of God as well. Surely
that. And God had brought him into favor with him. And the
prince of the eunuchs, because Daniel's been so gracious about
it. You see, this is the thing. We mustn't be objectionable and
obnoxious and nasty in our refusal of the king's food and wine.
We must be gracious as Daniel was. And the prince of the eunuchs
says, well, look, I've really got a problem because I'm terrified
of Nebuchadnezzar. And for me, if in a week or two
he looks at you and you're not thriving like the others, but
you're looking a bit thin and pasty because you haven't been
eating good food, then it won't be you that suffers, he'll have
my head. I'll lose my life. And Daniel said to Melzar, verse
11, whom the prince of the eunuchs had set over these four, Daniel,
Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, He said, prove us, I beseech
thee, ten days. Just give us ten days. And let
them give us pulse to eat. I'm not sure I know what pulse
is, but I suspect it's mashed vegetables. I suspect it's just
mashed vegetables. You'd say, well, it hasn't got
the protein of meat in it. It hasn't got the goodness and
all the strength that you need. Now, let me say one thing quite
clearly. This is not a recipe for a modern effective diet.
Don't think that for one moment. This is spiritual. This is teaching
us spiritual things. They would not be defiled with
the king's food and the king's wine. And he said, just give
us pulse to eat and water to drink and then let our countenances,
the way we look, be examined before you. The countenance of
the children that eat the king's meat and us. So he thought, that's
not an unreasonable request. I'll go along with that. I'll
put you to the test. Just ten days. Ten days. If it's
obviously going wrong, we can revert to the original regime
of eating the king's food and drinking the king's wine. And
of course you know what happened. God honored it. God honored that
stand for him. Jesus said, if any man serve
me, him will my father honor. That's John 12 verse 26. If any
man serve me, him will my father honor. Gracious adherence to
the truth of the gospel leads to blessing. That's the message
of this book. gracious adherence to the truth of the gospel in
the face of everything that the world and false religion would
say to us will lead to God's blessing. Lead to God's blessing. They didn't need that worldly
food of Nebuchadnezzar to grow. They didn't need it. We don't
need those worldly methods to grow as a church, as the people
of the living God. Proverbs 15 verse 16 says this,
Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure
and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs,
where love is, than a stalled ox, that means beef to last you
the winter, and hatred therewith. Isn't that wise? Isn't that true?
Perhaps, spiritually, we are experiencing days of eating only
pulse, mashed vegetables. But God will reward it. God will
reward it if we don't compromise in any way with worldly doctrine
and methods. You see, God honored these young
men. We're going to finish any moment
now. God honored Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We read
in verse 20, look there, that he found them ten times. The
king, when he examined them to see what they'd learned and how
they'd done, he found them ten times better than all the magicians
and astrologers that were in all his realms. I don't know
exactly how you measure that, but I think we know the sense
of what it means. They stood out, head and shoulders. These
young men, with this learning, and with the Spirit of God upon
them, because they hadn't compromised the truth in worldly Babylon,
they hadn't compromised the truth of the doctrine of salvation,
of truth, of non-idolatrous way to God. They hadn't compromised
it, and He blessed them and honored them, as He promised. He that
honors Me, Him I will honor. They remained only four. They
didn't see loads of Judah flocking over to them and saying, oh,
you must have the truth. They remained only four when
all those in the religion of Judah had compromised and pretended
to be Judah but were not Judah. They'd done all of those things.
But they remained true and God blessed them. And God gave them
this wisdom that was head and shoulders above those all around.
And he brought them into positions of great influence and authority
in that kingdom, in that captive kingdom of Babylon. And Daniel
continued there for 70 years or more until the first year
of King Cyrus. This was great blessing. You
see, Psalm 119 verse 99 says this, I have more understanding. This sounds so arrogant, but
it isn't. It's the humble confession of the child of God who knows
the Christ of God, who knows the one in whom are hidden all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, the truth of life, the truth
of eternity, the truth of death, the truth of God, of sin, of
righteousness, of judgment, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
and everything of this creation. Why wouldn't we know all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge in the Lord Jesus Christ? He
created all things. By Him were all things made. And so the Psalmist
says, I have more understanding than all my teachers for thy
testimonies are my meditation. Do you know I often hear from
a lady in America who listens to our messages And she's been
writing because she says she doesn't know what to do. She's
in a compromised situation. The church says it's a reformed
Baptist church, and it has a preacher who claims to be a Calvinist.
And she says she just gets this horrible feeling whenever he
preaches that there's idolatrous religion in it, and at the root
of it, and that he doesn't agree with such and such a thing, and
he doesn't agree with something else. She's gone into quite a
lot of details. What should she do? I've written back to her
and said, please do not feel that you're under any obligation
to continue there, because that is not a church. It's Babylon.
From what she says, it's compromised with worldly, idolatrous, false
religion. And she's seeking others to meet
with, even if it's just a handful. Rather than go to a big church
with 200 more people, all under the ministry of a false shepherd,
who looks so much like the truth, but has deviated from it. And
so with God's help, we will continue. And it is with God's help. It's
definitely not in our own strength. With God's help, we will continue
to eat the wholesome pulse, the mashed vegetables of the true
gospel of sovereign grace and particular redemption in the
Lord Jesus Christ and shun the food and the wine of idolatrous
religion, whatever that might hold out to us by way of promise.